Bastrop Council member advocates for farm bill on Capitol Hill

Bastrop City Council Member Deborah Jones outside the Capitol building in Washington D.C. on Sept. 13. Jones went to Washington to advocate for farmers in the nation’s upcoming farm bill. CONTRIBUTED

Bastrop City Council Member Deborah Jones flew to Washington D.C. two weeks ago to advocate for rural farmers and the interests of her constituents at the Capitol, pushing legislators to move forward with the nation’s $100 billion farm bill, which includes subsidies and protections for local farmers. A rural appraiser, Jones is an expert in determining the value of farm and ranch land, historic homes and small-town properties. She joined others with the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers on Capitol Hill Sept. 10-14 to talk to government leaders.

Here are some of her takeaways from the week and a brush-up on how the farm bill can affect rural communities like Bastrop County:

What is the farm bill?

The farm bill is really unique: Seventy-eight percent of it is related to nutrition (or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for low-income families) and 8.5 percent has to do with crop insurance (to pay back farmers who lose their crop to disasters), conservation (to protect land) and commodities (to ensure adequate supply and demand in the food market). What has happened now is that we have a majority representation in urban areas. The population before had always been rural. We are now a generation from the farm. We have the first generation that has grown up in the city, and they have no connection to the land. SNAP was brought in as part of the farm bill because it was the only way we could ever get anything to pass with urban representation. They wouldn’t go in and look at crop insurance and commodities and vote on it. The thing that is really odd about crop insurance: It is .26 percent of this bill — and people will not pass it because they feel like you are subsidizing farmers, but people won’t vote against feeding kids.

Why are we talking about this now and what is your position?

Every few years the farm bill is renegotiated. It is set to expire soon. It is being resubmitted pretty much as it was. Our position is when something expires it creates problems. You get desperate. Anytime you change something on the bill, you have people tacking a bunch of garbage onto it. We don’t want that. We want to keep it as it is. We are lobbying for it to stay the same. Our big push was to try to get this passed before the end of the year.

Why is this important for Bastrop County?

The family farm is so important. Without the farm bill, you would not have farming in Central Texas because farmers could not afford the risk of either, very specifically, these flooding events, or the drought. You’ve got to have insurance in place, or they would just be out of business. A lot of these farms, the cost of going in and buying all that land and restarting and relearning is just not reasonable. You have to keep people that are now currently farming in place because it’s economically not feasible to replace them. You and I could not afford to go in and pay the price. On a governmental level, it is really important that our farmers have stopgaps. It’s really important that farmers are in a position where, over time, they can be successful. This is just such a great program to keep those incentives, not only to keep farmers in business but to keep their families and their kids and the next generation interested, so they know, I can go into farming and I am not going to be wiped out. The government supports me.

Did you have the opportunity to speak with legislators about other issues affecting Bastrop?

One of the things I talked to them about was the Houston toad. We are trying to find a solution to the fact that a huge part of the city of Bastrop is restricted by the toad. We are looking at doing a mitigation, where we swap out land with other areas that are not being used, for example the Boy Scout camp. They have 4,500 acres. Why can’t we switch out or make an agreement with the land that is encumbered by the toad and put that conservation restriction and endangered species restriction into that camp? In reality, we have 1.5 toads on a hill that is keeping like 28 percent of the city from developing. That’s huge. And it’s so unfair to the property owners. You always have this ongoing overregulation of people that are urban, that don’t live in your environment telling you how to develop your environment. It’s a little frustrating.

What was your biggest takeaway from the week?

We are more alike than we are all different. We’ve got to come back to the middle. Even though we have very different lifestyles and we choose to live in very different areas, there has got to start being a focus on what’s good for everybody. We cannot push agendas. I need to care about you, and you need to care about me. And if we care enough about each other, it’s going to be good for both of us.